Blog # 8 Teaching to the test

Throughout my previous teaching career, I may say most of the teaching on EFL is exam oriented or test oriented. We, as the teachers, do research on specific test like IELTS, TOFEL, GMAT, GRE and SAT. We investigate on what kinds of questions would be tested, and why they ask such questions and how to conquer these questions. We would give the concrete tactics and skills of answering such questions. Most the students come to my institute for such tactics. The results of their test improved a lot after the training. Some may argue that this way of teaching is not supposed to improve the english proficiency as test takers just focus on getting higher score. The point I would like to argue is that to get a higher mark in the test need the basic English knowledge, which means the knowledge for English as a language is the basics for getting a decent marks. On the one hand, we as the trainers, teach the test candidates the skills of answering the question; on the other hand, we also teach them the language knowledge they are supposed to obtain for taking the test. Teaching to the tests is not only about the test but also about language itself.